Ch.5 - BETH

The next time we met, Erisa came to me, she showed me some Perl tutorials (Taylor was right!) and started instructing me on how to program. As homework she gave me a pageful of exercises.

One exercise, that involved a lot of text-processing and the so called "regular expressions", turned out to have a bug, but I could not find it. I thought about calling Taylor, but then thought that maybe the IRC would be helpful.

So I logged on to Freenode, and joined the #perl channel. Here's what happened: --> You are now talking on #perl --- Topic for #perl is Welcome to #perl :: Do not flood, use http://sial.org/pbot/perl/ to show us code. This is a                      Perl help channel, please ask your question. :: Latest perl golf can be found at http://terje2.perlgolf.org :: Latest perl is 5.8.5 --- Topic for #perl set by qualoo Hi all! So like I was saying, I did not had a serious experience with the BSDs, so I could not say. jennray: hi! Can you help me with debugging some code? I'm trying to learn Perl. Sure. Just don't paste it here. Use the pastebot. perlbot: nopaste Paste your code here and #perl will be able to view it: http://sial.org/pbot/perl Okey dokey. jennray: I see on your /whois that your name is "Jennifer                     Raymond". So you're a girl? Yes, I am. jennray: nice. We could always use more girl perlers. We have another female regular here called "beth". She, on the other hand, knows her stuff pretty well. :-)           Also, guys flirt with her all the time here. (and she flirts back).           Well, I have a boyfriend.            So does beth.                 -->  beth has joined #perl            jennray: talk about the devil!            BETH!               RINDOLF! HOW ARE YOU?            jennray: something you need to know about beth is that                      you must always greet her with ALL-CAPS.            Heh heh.            beth: jennray is trying to learn Perl and she has a                      problematic code. jennray: will you please post it to the                      pastebot now?            Yeah, OK.          "jennray" at 127.0.0.1 pasted "Problematic Code"                       (16 lines) at http://sial.org/pbot/3326               hmmm… jennray, are you sure you want to use a '*' in the                      regex on the last character and not on the whole string?            Oh! It affects just the last character?            Yes. You need to cluster it by using (?:mystring) or                      capture it using (mystring). Trying… It works! Thanks beth and rindolf! no problem. i'm here to serve. beth++ jennray: whenever someone helps you you must increase their karma by plus-plusing them. rindolf: ah, OK. beth++ * beth hugs jennray